The view that an operator has of the process he or she is responsible for controlling has changed significantly over the past few decades. Initially, operators were presented with many individual indicators carefully arranged across vertical or half-height bench boards to give the operator an organized view of an entire process. With the introduction of distributed control systems (DCS), engineers were provided with a host of new capabilities including the ability to present information to operators in an entirely new way. Unfortunately, these new capabilities were not necessarily applied with the same careful attention to the operators' perspective as the original controls enjoyed. One significant change in this transition was the loss of the “big picture” as the process was “chopped” into smaller pieces that would more conveniently fit the landscape available on computer monitors. The transition to the world of digital controls also included the loss of trending in many cases, which was valuable to an operator in the analog world and still should be today.
Over the course of the past few years, often as the result of unfortunate events, industry has realized the need to focus greater attention on presenting “information” to our operators, not just “data.” This recent awakening to the importance of how we present information to operators has generated a movement within the industry toward better graphical presentation of information, improvement of ergonomic design, and even more focus on how we design control rooms. The intent of all these changes has been to equip the operator with better tools and a better environment to allow a more effective performance, which is critical to the success of any facility.